Why terrorism bypasses China's far west
By Colin Mackerras
Implications for Xinjiang? Four bombs exploded in Uzbekistan in late March, three of them in the capital, Tashkent. Two female suicide bombers carried out the attacks. The government of President Islam Karimov immediately charged responsibility for the bombings to the worldwide Islamist al-Qaeda network, but some observers claimed the blasts were a reaction against official oppression of the people in general and Muslims in particular.
Will Xinjiang, in China's far northwest, follow suit with suicide bombings and similar violence? Tensions already exist there, with the Chinese authorities and the large Han population vigilant against separatism and Islamic militancy among the Uighurs, a Muslim Turkic people who have made their home in the region since at least the 8th century.
My short answer is that suicide bombings and similar violence in Xinjiang are possible but unlikely. Xinjiang has many social and political problems of the kind that could easily erupt into further terrorist actions (some have taken place in the past, but not on a large scale). However, China increasingly has the situation in its far northwest under control through its carrot-and-stick approach.
But China may well use the Uzbekistan bombings to strengthen its hand in cracking down further on Muslim activists in resource-rich Xinjiang. In a report issued in January 2002, China said 200 violent incidents took place between 1990 and 2001. At a press conference this April 12, Xinjiang government Chairman Simayi Teliwardi said there had been no blasts or assassination incidents in Xinjiang in "recent years", a sign that China indeed may have the situation generally under control and that terrorist violence has declined.
Historical background
China took over Xinjiang in the 18th century. From the early 19th to the mid-20th century there was a long line of separatist movements by the Muslim peoples of the region, almost all suppressed by military force. In 1944, a Uighur-Kazakh coalition established the East Turkestan Republic, some say at the behest of the Soviet Union. The Nationalist (Kuomintang) Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek managed to negotiate a deal with them, but the situation remained very unstable until communist troops took over Xinjiang firmly in September 1949 after their victory in China's civil war.
Though Xinjiang experienced problems during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and in the 1980s, the difficulties were not generally due to separatism. But in April 1990 a separatist movement led by Uighur Islamic militant Zahideen Yusuf emerged in Baren Township, not very far from Kashgar in the far southwest of Xinjiang. The 1990s saw a further series of disturbances in many parts of the region, by far the most serious being in Yining, known to the Uighurs as Gulja, near the border with Kazakhstan. The Chinese authorities have suppressed all these disturbances brutally, and executions of Uighur Islamic militants on the grounds of terrorism and separatism continue to this day. International human-rights bodies such as Amnesty International have accused China of serious abuses in Xinjiang, charging that they are now worse there than anywhere else in the country - even worse than in Tibet.
(China and its allies on April 15 blocked a vote in the United Nations Human Rights Commission on a US-backed resolution criticizing Beijing's human-rights record. It cited the situation in Xinjiang and Tibet and continuing restrictions on freedom of association and religion in those regions and elsewhere in China.)
Ethnic make-up
The 2000 census put Xinjiang's total population at about 18.5 million, and official surveys showed growth to 19.05 million by the end of 2002. Among these people, the two most populous ethnic groups are the Uighurs at 45.2 percent and the Han at 40.6 percent, with the Muslim Kazakhs running a poor third at 6.7 percent, according to the 2000 census. Chinese accounts say the total population in 1949 was 4.33 million, of whom 75.9 percent were Uighurs, 10.2 percent Kazakhs and only 6.7 percent Han.
This means that though the absolute figures have risen, the proportion of Uighurs has fallen drastically, and of the Kazakhs somewhat, while the percentage of Han has shot up. There are also other ethnic groups, such as the Chinese Muslims (Hui), the Kyrgyz and the Tajiks. Other than the Han, the great majority of Xinjiang's people are Muslims.
Minorities are exempt from the one-child-per-couple policy, though it has been my finding from random samples over four visits to Xinjiang (1982, 1994, 1999 and 2003) that the pressures on them to keep the numbers of their children small have intensified over the years. What has really made the difference to the proportions in the population is immigration of Han Chinese from the east. This began in the 1950s when authorities demobilized many of the victorious communist troops into the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps and sent numerous other Han from the east to join the corps. They had three main tasks: to maintain border security, to keep the minorities in order, and to boost economic production. This Han immigration reached a height in 1978, then began to decline during the 1980s, but again accelerated in the 1990s. In 2000, the government launched its Great Western Development Strategy, which has involved extensive investment from the east in Xinjiang and Han immigrants to staff development.
This Han immigration is a major cause of resentment among the Uighurs, who feel they are being taken over. They resent the way the Han give one another the best jobs and look down on the Uighurs as culturally inferior. Recent Han immigrants have a worse reputation than longtime residents, because they are thought to care for nothing except making a fast buck and to have no lasting concern for Xinjiang. Before the 1980s all immigration was government-sponsored, but more recently many Han go simply as "drifters", and quite a few don't stay very long.
Policy
China's policy toward Xinjiang is twofold: rapid economic modernization and zero tolerance for secession. China is determined to keep Xinjiang as part of China, and what my visit in October-November 2003 told me was that this policy is succeeding, though at a cost.
Chinese government authorities reckon that rapid economic modernization will raise the standard of living of the people enough that a good proportion of them will see their best interests served in remaining part of the People's Republic of China (PRC), which will result in social stability. At the same time, the history of the region shows that China treads firmly on any attempt at secession, however small in scale, and keeps an eagle eye out, especially among groups it doesn't trust, which include the Muslim clerics and devout laymen.
Certainly, the standard of living is going up, especially in the cities. Measured against 1978 prices, household consumption multiplied by nearly 16 times in the countryside between 1978 and 2002, and just over 23 times in the cities, according to official figures.
Virtually all cities I visited in 2003 had the signs of extensive modernization. In all the major towns, there are modern and clean city squares, wide roads, modern apartments and Internet cafes. Indeed, a Uighur friend told me that she and other people, of whatever ethnic group, are worried by the amount of time young men spend at Internet cafes playing useless games. Some also imbibe information from overseas that authorities find dangerous. The capital Urumqi is now home to two five-star hotels, new and modern office blocks, high-speed motorways, beautiful new apartment blocks and a bright and modern new airport.
There are downsides to this economic development. One is the cost to the environment. Xinjiang has always been very dry, especially the south. But modernization requires a lot of water, and its management leaves a lot to be desired. Industrialization in cities such as Urumqi causes factories to spew clouds of black smoke.
Xinjiang has become China's premier cotton-growing area. Cotton is one of the Uighurs' traditional products, and late last year I interviewed at random Uighur cotton farmers who were prepared to say they were making a lot of money and were expecting their income to go up even more before the end of 2003. But the fact is that the Han have been much more active in the cotton-production increase than the Uighurs. Many Han immigrants work on the cotton plantations. As one of the Uighur cotton growers complained to me, the Han have better access to the Chinese state and economic management organs, which yields them far more from cotton in terms of money and privileges than the Uighurs can get. He said this was not good for relations between the Han and Uighurs.
Inequalities
Cotton is just one focus of economic and political inequality. There are many of these in Xinjiang society. On the whole the Han are the most prosperous people in Xinjiang, with the Hui, Uighurs and Kazakhs being some distance behind and in that order. Although there are many poor Han and a significant and growing Uighur middle class, the Han are far better represented among entrepreneurs, professionals and other middle-class groups than are the Uighurs. The Kazakhs again fall well behind the Uighurs.
The Han concentrate more in the cities than the countryside, while with the Uighurs it is the other way around. And it is precisely in the cities that most of the modernity is focused. The southern part of Xinjiang is much the poorest, precisely the area where most of the Uighurs live. And while it is true that the Great Western Development Strategy is giving a lot of attention to the south, the Han are getting more of the economic benefits from development than the Uighurs, let alone the Kazakhs. Official figures on income by ethnic group are not available. Official figures do tell us, however, that in 2002 the urban/rural income ratio was 4.1:1, which is higher than the national average (3.5:1), but not by any means the highest in the country.
In the urban job market, Han do much better than Uighurs, even though there is an affirmative-action policy that stipulates preference for minorities. Though many Han employers observe the policy, they generally prefer Han because they trust their own kind more. To be fair, the authorities are trying to overcome the problems of differential employment opportunities by increasing the educational levels of the minorities. However, that brings its own problems, because doing well in the job market means knowing very good Chinese, and many Uighurs feel they tend to lose their own culture if their Chinese is good enough to be really useful for employment.
Anybody can live in the new apartment blocks, provided one can pay. And the fact is, as several sources admitted to me, there are more Han who can pay than minorities, because they have better-paid jobs. And per capita, there are more Uighurs than Kazakhs living in these modern flats.
Xinjiang is called an autonomous region, which means that the people who head the government must belong to the ethnic group exercising autonomy, in this case the Uighurs. And the Uighurs are quite well represented in the government.
However, this is not the case with the body that wields real power, namely the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Many sources told me that the norm in Xinjiang at all levels is for the government head to be a Uighur, but the CCP head to be a Han.
In 1997, according to official figures, there were 358,000 minority members of the CCP in Xinjiang, accounting for 37.37 percent of the total of 958,000. Since the minorities are much more than 37.37 percent of the population, it is obvious that they are under-represented in the CCP. Moreover, it is likely that the locus of power of the minorities is lower than the Han, with Han occupying most of the highest positions in the CCP.
Given that most minorities are Muslims, this may not be too surprising, since Muslims may not wish to belong to an atheist political party for religious reasons. But several sources mentioned to me that even Uighur CCP members usually believed in Islam anyway, despite calling themselves Marxist-Leninists.
There are Uighurs who are doing well in economic terms, and they generally enjoy a much higher standard of living than they could have expected only a decade or so ago. But the disparities are serious, and several Uighurs told me of their conviction that they are widening.
To be fair, ethnic inequalities are hardly peculiar to Xinjiang or to China. However, that does not lessen the antagonisms caused by wealth and opportunity gaps. Government authorities are among those calling for action to reduce inequalities of all kinds.
Islam
Almost all Xinjiang's Muslim ethnic groups are Sunni. The exception is the Tajiks, who are Iranian linguistically and culturally and therefore Shi'ite. However, the 2000 census counted only 39,493 Tajiks in Xinjiang.
Islam has been growing in influence over the past decade and more. There were about 20,000 mosques in Xinjiang in 2000, according to official figures, many of them new or newly restored, and most being in the Uighur-dominated south. Traditionally, the Uighurs have had a reputation for far stricter observance of Islamic rules and practices than the Kazakhs, and that remains the case today. They are far more likely to worship five times a day. On the whole the mosques in the Uighur areas are far more numerous, better patronized and larger than in the Kazakh areas. One reason is that the Kazakhs tend more to be nomadic, and a mosque may be further away from their current home.
The fact that the Uighurs, Kazakhs and Hui are all Muslims does not ensure good relations among them. I asked several clergy whom I interviewed whether people of different ethnic groups worship in different mosques. They answered, with some feeling as though I had asked an insulting question, that there was no such policy, but they conceded that was what happened in practice.
In one respect, Uighurs, Kazakhs and Hui agree strongly: they are very much against interethnic marriages. I interviewed quite a few people from all three ethnic groups. Among my questions was how they would react if one of their children wanted to marry a Han Chinese. All said they would strongly resist it, because marriages with non-Muslims were always a failure and against their tradition. Oddly enough, this is not only a religious matter. It's also ethnic. I found Uighurs very resistant to the idea that any of their children should marry a Kazakh, even though the Kazakhs are Muslims. Uighurs interviewed expressed some contempt for Kazakhs, regarding them as inferior in culture.
There are two big restrictions on attending the mosque: one against women, imposed by Islam itself, the other against anybody aged 18 or under, imposed by the government.
Women very rarely pray at the mosque, and never in the main prayer hall. The only time I saw women at a mosque in Xinjiang during any of my four visits was in 2003 at the beautiful 16th-century mosque in Yarkant, not far southeast of Kashgar. Three women were praying below the prayer hall and right at the side, while the prayer hall itself was crowded. Women are supposed to pray at home. In the south of Xinjiang, when women appear in public, many of them wear a full veil that covers their entire head, including their eyes.
The government forbids people under 18 to go to the mosque. There are signs in Uighur at the Uighur mosques and in Chinese at the Hui mosques spelling out quite a few rules, one of them being age restriction. The reason given is that children should be studying and getting an education, not going to the mosque. Another reason for the proscription is no doubt to reduce Islamic influence on the youth. I asked quite a few laymen and clergy what they thought of this rule. None would criticize it, possibly through fear of the consequences if they did.
The government is afraid of Islam, because it is so anti-communist. Authorities believe Islam responsible for trying to turn Uighurs against the Han. Perhaps more important, they suspect that some of its leaders harbor political intentions to try to overthrow the state. Public security is active everywhere and keeps an eagle eye on the mosques. Authorities are not reluctant to condemn individuals without a fair trial if they think the CCP's power is under threat. It is precisely for this reason that human-rights activists have been so critical of the authorities.
Laymen I interviewed at several mosques expressed loathing for separatists, fearing that their presence gave Islam a bad name. What they actually feel in their hearts I do not know, because I doubt that any would tell a foreigner in a group situation that they supported separatism.
Islamic militancy, terrorism
The association of separatism with Islamic militants is a long one in Xinjiang, as the brief history at the beginning of this article showed. After the disturbances that occurred from 1990 on, the CCP and the government held a large-scale meeting in May 1996 to decide how to react to the deteriorating security situation in Xinjiang. The meeting heaped much of the blame on Islamic militants, even accusing them of infiltrating the CCP to undermine it. The meeting called for the reorganization of "weak and lax" CCP branches, especially those dominated by Muslims, better training of cadres (administrators and professionals) and better investigation into cases of people who harassed and took revenge against CCP members and cadres.
That this meeting failed to achieve its immediate objective was obvious from the major disturbances in Yili early the following year, 1997. There was a series of terrorist bomb blasts in Urumqi on the very day that the memorial ceremony took place in Beijing for Deng Xiaoping (February 25, 1997), who had died six days before. The official Xinjiang Daily charged that three bombs had been planted in late-afternoon buses, killing nine people and wounding 74, most of the victims being children on their way home from school.
The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington heightened the general fear of terrorism in Xinjiang. In January 2002, the government released a long report accusing terrorist forces fighting for an independent Uighur state of having been responsible for more than 200 terrorist incidents in Xinjiang between 1990 and 2001. It also claimed that the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), headed by Hasan Mahsum, was receiving "unstinting" moral, material and financial assistance from Osama bin Laden, with the aim of launching a "holy war" to separate Xinjiang from China and set up an independent East Turkestan. Hasan Mahsum has acknowledged leadership of ETIM, but denied receiving any help, let alone financial, from bin Laden. Mahsum was killed by Pakistani soldiers in Pakistan last October.
The US Department of State commented with a forked tongue: its counter-terrorism office was generally sympathetic toward China's position, even commending it for taking concrete actions against terrorism, but its human-rights section continued to condemn discrimination against Uighurs in Xinjiang and any action it saw as a human-rights abuse.
In August 2002, the concern with worldwide terrorism won out when the United States officially sided with China by recognizing ETIM as a terrorist organization. The United Nations shortly followed the US lead. Beginning from last December 15, the Chinese government has identified a number of other groups in Xinjiang it claimed were terrorist and separatist and called for international support against them.
Uighur organizations overseas and human-rights activists were alarmed at the US and UN moves, regarding them as kowtowing to the Chinese government, despite abuses claimed by human-rights organizations such as Amnesty International. Many observers argue strongly that there is not enough evidence to condemn ETIM or others as terrorists. They claim that to brand ETIM as terrorist is a gross overreaction that the Chinese have been able to get away with because of the general international fear of terrorism.
They claim, further, that the disturbances against the Chinese are largely due to Han immigration, various forms of oppression from the authorities, discrimination against the Uighurs and other minorities, and state-sponsored terrorism against separatists. For the Uighur diasporic organizations, the Chinese state is the terrorist organization, while active opponents of its rule are freedom fighters.
My own opinion is that the Chinese do have reason to fear terrorism, but that they have exaggerated the problem for political reasons.
There is no doubt that on the whole the disturbances of the 1990s were indeed inspired by separatists, many of them deriving inspiration from Islamic militants. Uighurs have been found fighting outside Xinjiang, including in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and there are some imprisoned in the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
However, there are some anti-Muslim Uighurs, especially among intellectuals, who are highly nationalist. Some of them may want full independence, but others realize this is an unrealistic pipe dream and would settle instead for a greater degree of autonomy or some other accommodation within China. The Uighur tradition is similar to the Turkish in its strong element of secularism and intolerance against religiously based violence. By no means all nationalism in Xinjiang is based on Islamic militancy.
The January 2002 report, citing 200 incidents between 1990 and 2001, which the Chinese released precisely to emphasize the need to fight separatism, notes hardly any disturbances at the turn of the century. At a press conference this April 12, Xinjiang Chairman Simayi Teliwardi claimed that no explosions or assassination incidents had taken place in in Xinjiang in "recent years". While his likening of terrorists to "rats scurrying across the street" was totally unnecessary and provocative, he was probably right in suggesting that terrorist separatism is on the decline in Xinjiang. Reasons may include vigilance by the public security organs and the general rise in the standard of living.
This does not mean that problems of ethnic relations and hostility to the Chinese state are about to go away. It does mean that the Chinese could afford to be more tolerant of Islam and could take other measures geared towards inspiring greater confidence among Uighurs, such as reducing Han immigration. However, I do not expect the Chinese to relax their policy, at least in part because of the situation in Central Asia and especially because of the recent bomb blasts in Uzbekistan.
Links with Central Asia: Uzbekistan
At the same time as Islamic impact has increased in Xinjiang, Chinese economic and political influence has risen in the countries of Central Asia that once belonged to the Soviet Union. China once saw a major threat from the Soviet Union, but with the fall of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, a new threat seemed to come from Central Asia in the form of pan-Islamic militancy.
In an April 1996 meeting, the presidents of five countries, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan - all but China formerly part of the Soviet Union - met in Shanghai to discuss mutual interests. These included economic cooperation of various kinds as well as several other serious issues, such as terrorism and the control of drugs and arms across mutual borders. The presidents of these five countries have continued to meet on a regular basis, showing that their joint cooperation matters to them. In 1999, they signed an agreement in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, to set up a formal organization for the control of terrorism. In June 2001, in other words before the September 11 terrorist attacks, they met again in Shanghai and formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. This time there was a sixth country represented, Uzbekistan.
This country is notable in the present context for two reasons. One is that it has grappled with Islamic militants for some years, the other that President Karimov is known for his heavy-handed approach to solving problems and his abuse of human rights. Many specialists think that his methods are counterproductive, exacerbating the very problems he is trying to solve. In 1998, Islamic militant leaders set up the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which the US soon recognized as a terrorist organization.
The United States, which began its "war against terrorism" by overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan late in 2001, has moved into several Central Asian countries to an unprecedented extent. Never before has it been able to set up military bases in Central Asia, as it has now done in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and especially Uzbekistan.
We can expect that all the countries of the region will be deeply concerned about the bomb blasts in Uzbekistan. China has taken a very low profile in reaction, but may crack down even harder on separatism or terrorism.
If injustice is one of the causes of terrorism in Central Asia, then terrorism itself has provoked an unprecedented reaction among the states of the region to protect themselves and each other. They may have differences, including over borders, but when it comes to terrorism they see their interests as the same. And the United States, Russia and China also find themselves with a common purpose in opposing terrorism in the Central Asian region.
China has shown it is determined to hold on to Xinjiang. The signs are that it is succeeding, despite ongoing problems, and that separatist terrorism is declining. Suicide bombing is unlikely to spread there, but it cannot be ruled out.
Colin Mackerras is foundation professor in the Department of International Business and Asian Studies at Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. He has visited Xinjiang four times, most recently in October-November 2003. He has written extensively on ethnic issues in China, including Xinjiang, his most recent book being China's Ethnic Minorities and Globalisation, Routledge Curzon, 2003. He can be reached at c.mackerras@griffith.edu.au.
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